vendredi 21 mars 2014

Anxieties of West African Democracy: Six Presidential Elections in 2014-2015 (Part II)

Article published on 21 March 2014 on African
Futures: http://forums.ssrc.org/african-futures/2014/03/21/part-ii-anxieties-of-west-african-democracy-six-presidential-elections-in-2014-2015/

In
the first part of this article, the author describes the political context
surrounding the high-risk presidential elections that will take place in six
countries in West Africa in 2014-2015. It considered in particular, the
anticipated intensity of electoral competition in each country, one of the
three elements of risk he’ll use, to assess the likelihood of violence. In this
second part, he examines the current security context of the different
countries and the institutional environments that will oversee the electoral
process.

The second element of consideration for an analysis of the risks
tied to the West African presidential elections of 2014-2015, is a state’s
general security situation. Unfortunately, for these six, this is not reassuring.
Among the determining factors of a security context, this piece considers the
existence or nonexistence of armed rebel or ex-rebel groups, the degree of
political control and professional integrity of the security forces, the extent
of alignment between political affinity and ethnic and regional identities, the
conditions, peaceful or not, of the most recent presidential elections, as well
as the magnitude and form of political and/or security involvement of important
foreign actors.

Nigeria appears to be without contest the most fragile security
environment. The 2015 election will unfold in a country already battling with
the terrorist group Boko Haram in the Northeast, and harbors organized armed
groups in the Niger Delta who are just as likely to either politically support
or create pressure on President Goodluck Jonathan (who also hails from this
South-South region). The country is also experiencing elevated levels of
violence including political, economic, ethnic, and religious dimensions in the
Middle Belt (the center of the country) and elsewhere in the territory. Furthermore,
the Nigerian federation is accustomed to the violent aftermaths of elections,
as was the case in 2011, even though the ballot was judged to be better
organized and more credible than all other previous votes.

More than 800 people were killed in three days of riots and fury
in twelve northern states of the federation. The trigger was the defeat of
northern candidate Muhammadu Buhari who was facing Jonathan. Nigeria did not
need the terrorism of Boko Haram to achieve such levels of violence, pitting ordinary
citizens against each other, with a certainly a dose of spontaneity but also a clear
degree of preparedness to the violence by political-ethnic entrepreneurs and
religious extremists. From the perspective of 2015, the blackmail of violence
has already begun in the country, driven by militant groups threatening either "if
Jonathan is not re-elected, there will be chaos" or "if Jonathan was
re-elected, there will be chaos." When this psychological preparation is
added to the very low level of confidence Nigerian populations have in the
integrity and professionalism of the security forces, the fear of a dark debut
to 2015 for West Africa’s great power seems very legitimate.

Guinea, because of the repercussions of ethno-regional political
polarization and its history of violence, is also quite fragile in terms of
security. It should be recognized that undeniable progress that has been made
under the Condé presidency in the reform of the security sector, which has
translated into an increased capacity of law enforcement to contain street
protests, while no longer killing dozens of people at each occasion. This is
not the era of Lansana Conté or Dadis Camara, but Guinea’s security forces are still
far from showing exemplary behavior and the political neutrality of officials in
charge of law and order is far from being a reality. The various protests that
had punctuated the long and difficult march towards parliamentary elections in
September 2013 still resulted in sometimes deadly violence. It is therefore
likely that a few explosive face-to-face encounters between opposition
protesters and security forces will occur during the process leading to the 2015
presidential election.

The security context is not particularly reassuring in either
Guinea Bissau or Côte d'Ivoire. In the first country, the chiefs of the army have
always considered themselves autonomous from the civil political authorities, and
security sector reform, despite being on the international agenda for ten years,
never took off. In Côte d'Ivoire, significant efforts have been made to manage
the catastrophic consequences of post-election conflict in 2011, but it will
take a few more years to provide the country with defense and security forces
that are coherent, effective and politically neutral. The difficult legacy of
years of rebellion and conflict may heavily impact the security environment and
political developments...most probably after the 2015 election. Both in Guinea
Bissau and Côte d'Ivoire, the presence of external actors mandated to maintain
peace, the military mission of ECOWAS (ECOMIB) and the United Nations Operation
in Côte d'Ivoire (UNOCI), respectively, plays in favor of relative security
around next elections.

The political position of the defense and security forces and
the maintenance of their unity are uncertain elements within the security
context of Burkina Faso, which saw violent mutinies in 2011. It is impossible
to know how the Burkinabe army and the different generations of officers that
compose it, will handle this unprecedented situation of political uncertainty
after 2015. Many senior military officials were appointed after the mutinies of
2011 to regain control of this essential pillar of Compaoré’s power. Do they
consider their fate bound to Compaoré staying in the presidential palace after
2015? How do the president’s closest officers, who have accompanied him since
the very brutal early years of the regime, imagine their future? There are many
questions and few answers, which should not lessen the anguish of Burkina Faso
and many of their West African neighbors. In Togo, the question of political
positioning of the security forces and the army is less difficult to answer:
the secure grasp on the power in Lomé seems to resist the hands of time.

Finally, it is important to interrogate the institutional
framework in which these presidential races will be unfolding in the different
countries. These frameworks include the rules, procedures, and institutions
that are mobilized from the beginning to the end of the election process, and
which play a determining role in the credibility of the elections and in
particular the final results which designate a victor. Even if the credibility
of the electoral process is not a guarantee of the absence of crisis and
violence, the perception of a substantial lack of credibility is almost always
a trigger of serious troubles. More so, when presidential elections happen in a
country where the security environment is already fragile, and in the context
of an intense competition for power, the credibility of the institutional setting
of the election can be decisive for saving the country from falling into a post-electoral
crisis.

Yet it is wise not to relay too much on this. The electoral
laws, the conditions for establishing voter files, the political neutrality and
the technical competence of institutions put in charge of organizing elections
and examining post-electoral legal claims are subjects of controversy
everywhere. None of the countries with an upcoming presidential election in
2014 or 2015 is considered as a model in the region in organizing free,
transparent, and credible election. Some, like Nigeria, have accomplished
notable progress in the past years, but they are still far, very far, from the
models in West Africa, which are Ghana, Cape Verde and Senegal, where electoral
commissions and/or other institutions have been able to run some very
competitive yet credible elections.

In Nigeria, a number of reforms that were recommended by experts
in the wake of the general elections of 2011 to correct the biggest failures of
the system were not implemented. In Guinea it took mediations, intrusive international
technical involvement, and a fiercely negotiated political agreement to
organize the legislative elections in September 2013.The list of tasks to
accomplish in order to render the provisioned elections more credible in 2015
is very long. It includes the establishment of a new voter registry and putting
in place new institutions such as the Constitutional Court, which should
replace the Supreme Court in the key role of validating final results. Even in
Côte d’Ivoire, where the current president promised a revision of the
constitution, nothing has been done to put an end to the special institutional
framework designed by peace agreements and to equip the country with a new credible
and politically neutral electoral authority.

To conclude, all one can do is agree with citizens of West
Africa, who are made anxious by the approaching electoral seasons. After considering
the three elements of evaluation simultaneously, none of the countries will be
safe from strong tensions prone to degenerate into serious violence. Taking the
risk of being wrong, -- who can truly predict all possible scenarios in each of
these countries several months before the different elections?--, it is
reasonable to classify Nigeria and Guinea as very high risk countries, Burkina
Faso as a high risk country, and Guinea-Bissau, Côte d’Ivoire and Togo as
moderate risk, this last category certainly not meaning “low” or “non-existent”
risk.

Calamitous elections are not yet unforeseeable and inevitable
natural disasters. The citizens of each of the countries in question, ECOWAS
and important international actors have the means to tame their anxiety by
strongly mobilizing to prevent violent crises. But there is also a risk in understanding
elections solely and uniquely as moments of imploding danger for states, and thus
seeking only violence-free elections. This often leads, for regional and
international organizations, to preferring the manipulation of the electoral
process in favor of the more powerful camp, and therefore more capable of
provoking chaos in case of defeat, compared to actually free elections where
the outcome is uncertain. The risk is forgetting and make people forget what electoral
rituals should be doing in young and fragile democracies: anchoring little by
little a democratic culture in the society. If citizens must continue to vote
every four or five years with fear in their hearts, it is the popular adherence
to the democratic ideal in West Africa that will be ultimately threatened.